


When You Can’t Sleep at Night

by holdingtorches



Category: British Actor RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, actor!tom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2019-02-06 15:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12820290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holdingtorches/pseuds/holdingtorches
Summary: One shot. OC X Actor!Tom. Precis: OC walks in on Tom to find him watching a thriller. Fluff ensues.





	When You Can’t Sleep at Night

It was the night on the end of a long day’s work. You kept a positive outlook on things as you boarded the Tube, dreaming wide-awake about your best friend, who apparently asked if he could crash in at your flat because he just came home from globetrotting and country hopping and apparently sold his flat before he did so. As to why he did that, you couldn’t fathom. All you decided to look at was the good side of the coin, which was that someone would be waiting with hot, fresh dinner when you got home and that you would be living with the only lad you’ve loved since you both were children. He never knew about your feelings for him for even if you were to tell him the truth, he would just think of it as a prank. The lad’s name? His name is Tom Hiddleston.

You thought of him waiting for you in your flat’s poky kitchen, sitting on one of the chairs surrounding the round table in the centre of the little room, poring over a script he just received or the book you recommended a few days back. He probably cooked some food or picked up some fish and chips from the chip shop on the way home from rehearsals. You smiled as you saw him smile in the film playing in your mind. You let the dream edge further into unfeasibility as he pushed his chair back and walked toward you, his arms enveloping you in a warm embrace. He eventually walked over to face your back and massaged your shoulders while leading you to the kitchen, asking you how your day was.

The speaker interrupted your reverie, announcing your stop. You raced up the steps and briskly walked home, excited to see at least one part of your musing come into life. The autumn wind felt chilly as its chilliness felt like knives cutting at you cheeks. Winter was definitely coming soon, and soon Christmas. You pondered on what to give Tom as you squeezed through the human traffic. You wanted to give him something he could actually use while on the go so that your gift can be something to remind him of you. Something like a nice pen or possibly even an iPod with a bigger memory capacity and a clip like the one on the sixth generation iPod Nano. You chuckled as you remembered seeing him grumbling to himself as he got ready for his morning jog, fixing his tiny seventh generation iPod Shuffle.

All those thoughts distracted you from noticing that you were already in the hallway, walking towards the door. As you stood in front of your flat’s entrance, you felt anticipation wash over you, speeding up your heartbeat and making every nerve in your skin stand on end. You fumbled with the keys and breathed in as you pushed the door open, only to find a scene you didn’t expect to see in the slightest.

Tom’s back was facing you as he sat cross-legged on the bed, a laptop screen providing some light that silhouetted him. You glanced at the room’s desk and saw his MacBook on the table. ‘ _Shit!’_ , you thought as you walked on over to him. He must have found out your password and used it to look into your laptop. You knew you shouldn’t have written your password on the bottom Post-it on your desk.  _‘Fuck! He might have discovered my tumblr!’_ , you mentally yell to yourself, silently panicking as you walked on even closer to talk to him, only to see his eyes puffy and his cheeks streaked with tears. You tilted your head in and peered at your laptop’s screen from above, only to find the last scene of the film  _Sinister_  playing.

“Och, lad, how’d you open my laptop?” you ask him in the friendliest voice you can muster while failing miserably at hiding your anxiety.

“Luuuuuuuke,” he answered in a scared voice. You remembered that Luke Windsor knew the password to your laptop, given that you were quite close to the publicist. As to why Luke preferred to work with Windows 8 and with your laptop despite having one of his own was a mystery even to you.

You climbed onto the bed and wrapped your arms around him, leaning your head against his shoulder and tried calming him down. You leaned towards the laptop, closing the open windows and shutting it down. You then returned to rousing him from his fear, gently patting his back for a while before hugging him again, whispering hushes into his ear.

“You little shit,” you started, your voice serious and calm with a hint of flippancy, “you know you shouldn’t scare yourself like that. Look at yourself! If you don’t stop crying soon, you’ll flood the entire city of London and possibly Edinburgh with your tears. I’ll never really know why you chose that film out of all the other films I have there.”

“I thought I could handle it, but as it turns out, I couldn’t,” he said, his voice quivering. He turned to face you, and you hugged him tighter. You were determined to calm him down, or else he wouldn’t be able to fall soundly asleep that night. It would have major repercussions if he didn’t.

He stayed there in your arms for quite a long time, quietly crying on the crook of your neck as you rocked from side to side, the scene somewhat reminding you of Michelangelo’s Pietà. A pieta where both subjects were alive and the one being cradled was the one crying his eyes out. You were softly humming Of Mice & Men’s “When You Can’t Sleep at Night”, slowly succeeding at calming him down.

“You numpty, stop crying. You really shouldn’t have chosen that film if you knew that-” You were cut off by the sound of a stomach grumbling.

“Have you eaten yet?” you asked him, looking him sternly in the eye. He shook his head and croaked a meek “No.”

“Have you cooked anything or something like that?” you followed, and he replied with the same answer.

“You loon, let’s go to the kitchen. You have got to be hungry at the moment,” you told him. His hysterics eventually dissolved and he climbed out of the bed, untangling himself from your embrace. He walked his way to the kitchen, and you followed suit, taking a pot from the cabinet while thinking of what to cook. You decided on some bowtie pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce as you lit the stove, filled the pot with water and chucked the pasta in after bringing the water to a boil.

“Wow, it’s a miracle you’re cooking!” Tom said as he sat himself down on the same chair he sat on in your earlier daydream. You were happy to see him unafraid anymore; it was more saddening that it was funny when he’d cry because of a scary movie or script.

“Well, your mum and dad and sisters would never forgive me if I starved you,” you wittily replied, slapping his arm lightly after chopping some mushrooms and adding them to the sauce, which was simmering away.

A few minutes later, the both of you were sitting across each other and had piping hot plates of pasta in front of you. “ _Bon appetit_ ,” Tom said, the delight sparkling in his voice. You decided to see his reaction first before digging in. As he lifted his fork to his mouth, you eagerly anticipated what he thought of your cooking; he chewed and stared at you with wide eyes, looking up from his dish.

“…You never told me you can actually  _cook_! This is amazing!” Tom exclaimed, a wide grin breaking on his face. You chuckled at his fascination and started eating.

Silence hung like a fog and stood like a wall between the both of you. It felt as if things were itching to be said on both your parts, but something was chaining the both of you back. It felt awkward as you both ate without talking about Tom’s new, annoying co-star or that boss of yours that constantly flirted with you and got constantly rejected. You didn’t expect the uneasy silence the situation presented. But it wasn’t as unexpected as what was about to unfold.

“I saw your blog,” Tom said, tearing the silence apart with his dulcet voice.

At that moment, your darkest fears and most devastating nightmares animated into reality. Your head snapped up from your plate, your eyes filled with terror and humiliation as you looked at him.

“…what blog?” you asked him, laughing a weary laugh while once again finding yourself a failure at concealing your distress. You decided to try avoiding contact by looking down at your half-finished supper.

“You know which one. I decided to take a peek at it a while ago after Luke told me about it,” he replied, knowing the contents of your tumblr blog all too well.

At that moment, you finally realised why Luke used your laptop; it was so that he could monitor your blog without letting you see that someone was constantly viewing it. You mentally facepalmed yourself, finally figuring out that Luke was actually Tom’s devious little spy. He was also probably the one who gave him the idea to use your laptop instead of his own.

“Is it true then, what you posted on your blog? That you sometimes cry yourself to sleep at the dead of night because your feelings for me are— what was the phrase you used? ‘Deeper than the depths of Tartarus’? That what you feel hurts you because of its intensity?” You felt his gaze on your face, and you looked up to find him doing the thing he does with his eyebrows, the half-sincere half-sinister thing. Damn. His eyebrows were so fierce that they almost distracted you from the actual gravity of the situation.  _Almost_.

You stayed silent and pursed your lips as you let your hands fall at your lap. Averting your eyes once again, you felt stupid, humiliated, and scared. Your fear made your chest feel like it had boulders on top of it; you could barely breathe.

“Answer me,” Tom demanded in a serious tone, interrupting your train of thought. You sighed wistfully, knowing that everything came to this: an expected confession that was bound to be rejected once it was declared.

“Don’t you get it Tom? I…I love you.”

Stillness hung in the air, and you decided to elaborate your previous statement.

“I look down the tracks and see you coming, and out of every haze and mist, your darling rumpled trousers are hurrying to me,” you began, lifting the words right off of Zelda Fitzgerald’s love letter to her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think—or live—I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm or killing Beauty or growing old, without you. I want to kiss you so – and in the back where your dear hair starts and your chest. I love you – and I can’t tell you how much. To think that I’ll die without your knowing.” You smiled when you finished quoting it, remembering how you saw it in one of the books that you bought at the book fair you and Tom went to the other week and how it felt so similar to what you felt for him. The feels hit you so hard that you were able to memorise the entire letter, but stopped at where you did because the part you cut off wasn’t really that relevant to your answer.

You looked up to find Tom still across you from the table, tears once again rolling down his cheeks. He was whimpering a bit as he looked at you, his lips slightly trembling.

“Aw shit,” you said, rushing up to him and stroked the tears away from his eyes with your thumbs as your other fingers cupped his face lightly. “Why are you crying again, lad?”

“I don’t know what I’m feeling, darling. I feel so guilty because I wasn’t able to figure out what you feel for me and yet I feel so… relieved,” he answered. He wrapped his arms around you and pulled you to his lap so that you were straddling his thighs, with your face in front of his. His breath washed over your face, and your heart started racing.

“Relieved?” you asked, confused.

“I’ve loved you for the longest time as well, darling. I’m so glad that you feel the same way,” he answered. Your face lit up like a Christmas tree, finally hearing what you never even dreamed you would.

He leaned in and kissed you, his lips gentle and loving at first then passionate and desperate as the kiss dragged on. Your fingers knotted in his hair as his hands roamed your torso, eventually finding your waist. He gripped it and continued, pulling away only to kiss you again and again. After what felt like an eternity, you pulled away from him, panting and sated.

“So… would you like to watch  _Insidious_  now?” he asked.

“You just want to get laid,” you jokingly said, swatting his arm lightly.

“Maybe I do,” he laughed, smiling that toothy, mischievous smile of his. You embraced him tight and mussed his curls, knowing that this was just the start of a wonderful relationship and so many good memories waiting to happen.


End file.
